A new DoD initiative: the Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments (CREATE) program

TLDR

The U.S. Department of Defense launched the $360 million CREATE program in FY2008, a ten‑year effort built on lessons from large‑scale computational science projects that emphasize stable teams, customer focus, V&V, agile planning, risk management, realistic schedules, balanced goals, and long‑term sponsor support. CREATE aims to develop and deploy three computational engineering tool sets for DoD acquisition programs to design aircraft, ships, and radio‑frequency antennas. The program will build multidisciplinary teams, establish and validate requirements, and create the tools through iterative development and collaboration across institutions. Since FY2008, CREATE has assembled multidisciplinary teams, defined and validated requirements, identified candidate products, forged connections with acquisition programs, and established the collaboration infrastructure needed for success.

Abstract

In FY2008, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) initiated the Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments (CREATE) program, a $360M program with a two-year planning phase and a ten-year execution phase. CREATE will develop and deploy three computational engineering tool sets for DoD acquisition programs to use to design aircraft, ships and radio-frequency antennas. The planning and execution of CREATE are based on the 'lessons learned' from case studies of large-scale computational science and engineering projects. The case studies stress the importance of a stable, close-knit development team; a focus on customer needs and requirements; verification and validation; flexible and agile planning, management, and development processes; risk management; realistic schedules and resource levels; balanced short- and long-term goals and deliverables; and stable, long-term support by the program sponsor. Since it began in FY2008, the CREATE program has built a team and project structure, developed requirements and begun validating them, identified candidate products, established initial connections with the acquisition programs, begun detailed project planning and development, and generated the initial collaboration infrastructure necessary for success by its multi-institutional, multidisciplinary teams.